The Slime Slowly Rises

THE SLIME SLOWLY RISES….An emailer writes to tell me that Charlie Jarvis of USA Next, the outfit that ran the anti-AARP ad shown on the right, was on Inside Politics earlier today. After some blustering about how AARP is the “largest left liberal lobbying organization on the planet” and “we are going after them very aggressively,” Judy Woodruff asked why the ad had suddenly disappeared:

WOODRUFF: Charlie Jarvis, is USA Next going to run this ad some more? Why did you only have it up for one day?

JARVIS: We were testing to see whether left liberal groups would overreact. And they did. The hypothesis was that they would focus on one single tiny image on one Web site.

WOODRUFF: And it worked.

JARVIS: It worked. By the end of yesterday, to show you how crazy the left liberal groups are and that they have a death wish on Social Security, they literally were having people call television stations all over the country to pull the ad that didn’t exist. Remarkable.

You betcha, Charlie! You were just testing to see if us lefties would overreact. How sneaky of you.

Michael Tanner of Cato was also on the show and my correspondent says that “Tanner looked like his skin was crawling just having to sit next to Jarvis.” I don’t blame him. The White House sure knows how to pick their friends, don’t they?

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, Jarvis claims the ad is a legitimate attack on ARRP because “they do not take a position on veterans and combat veterans health” and because they opposed the Ohio gay marriage ban. The first charge is ridiculous and the second is mendacious. AARP clearly stated that they opposed the Ohio law ? and only the Ohio law ? because it was so broadly and vaguely written that they were afraid it could affect things like power of attorney for unmarried older couples both straight and gay.